AMAZING TASTE

There's an Instagram photo of Joshua Muhammad on a stage where he appears to be rapping, but he wants to make one thing clear.

"I don't rap," Muhammad says, laughing.

What he does is cook soul food on his Amazing Taste truck.

Muhammad’s journey to food truck ownership is not as unlikely as some of our other winners. He worked as a food buyer for a major wholesale food distributor for 15 years. A friend who was planning to open a restaurant in Carteret asked Muhammad to write up a business plan for the venture.

Muhammad thought it would be a great idea to “piggyback” a food truck onto the restaurant business, using the truck to sell the restaurant’s food in nearby towns. The restaurant went out of business. Muhammad bought a truck anyway, for $15,000 on Craigslist.

“It was a big-city idea that I wanted to bring to the city (Plainfield) I grew up in,” he says of his truck.

Amazing Taste specializes in soul food, with some Caribbean and Latino dishes, too.
Actually, his jerk chicken is his No. 1 seller; it’s spicier than the jerk chicken you’ll find at most Caribbean restaurants.

A vegetarian for 15 years, he has recently lapsed.

“The truck changed me,” he says. “I’m back to eating meat. Once I tasted chicken again, I realized how much I missed it.”